Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Friday, December 13, 2013

ACLU ReportFor the last 40 years, we have largely relegated health
problems like substance abuse and mental health disorders to the
criminal justice system. As a result, millions of people are burdened by
felony convictions due to drug use, and those who cannot afford to pay
for treatment have had to be locked in cells in order to get access to
necessary care.
Now, we have a chance to do something new. The Affordable Care Act
(ACA) represents a remarkable opportunity for criminal justice and drug
policy reform advocates to advance efforts to enact policy changes that
promote safe and healthy communities, without excessively relying on
criminal justice solutions that have become so prevalent under the War
on Drugs, and which fall so disproportionately on low-income communities
and communities of color. Even with its challenges, the ACA sets the
stage for a new health-oriented policy framework to address problems
such as substance use and mental health disorders by more appropriately
and effectively casting substance use and mental health disorders as
matters of public health and not of criminal justice. Our task is to
make the most of it.